It’s empowerment, Stupid! That explains the Kerala Model

There is much learned analysis alternately praising and damning the Kerala Model of development. The analysis errs, fatally, by excluding political empowerment, and explaining things in terms of the state and the market.

A conscious, mobilised people does away with neat separation between the two and forces both to deliver collectively valued goods and services. Amartya Sen praises state-led welfare, while Bhagwati and Panagariya attribute Kerala’s success to private enterprise and globalisation.

Colleague and columnist Swaminathan Aiyar cited Bhagwati and Panagariya and recent crime statistics to conclude that even the market-led achievements of Kerala are overstated (ET June 19).

Two Myths

Two myths are widespread. One, the Communists set out to create the Kerala Model and are happy with their achievement. Two, enlightened kings of Travancore and Cochin gave Kerala its historical lead in social development.

In early 20th century, Kerala’s backward castes zeroed in on education as their primary means of emancipation and raced to set up schools. The Christian missionaries were also setting up schools and hospitals, and proselytising. The state had to chip in, so as to retain legitimacy. This is the secret behind the unique kingly enlightenment .

Ayyankali, leader of the agricultural caste Pulayas towards the end of the 19th century and the early years of the 20th, led armed battles to secure his people’s right to walk on the public road, and drink tea from cups rather than in coconut shells, for their women to wear clothes, for their children to attend schools. He successfully withheld farm labour for nearly a year in 1907, looking to fishermen on the coast for alternate sustenance, and brought the land-owning sections to their knees. This strike, the first such in India’s history, was provoked by upper caste refusal to allow an ‘untouchable’ girl to attend a state-run school.

Social Movements

A socially powerful backward caste, the Ezhavas, through their own organised challenge of orthodoxy and own schools, added to the dynamic of subaltern empowerment. These struggles merged into the freedom movement. The Congress and its radical elements who broke away to form the Communist Party in Kerala, inherited this agitational quest for social equality.

The Communist goal was to create a Soviet-type society, convinced as they were that Stalin’s Russia represented the superior future of mankind. They mobilised and organised all sections of society: factory and farm workers, teachers, nurses, civil servants, peasants, the youth, students, just about anyone, save the tribal population.

Thus organised and empowered, the people resisted the gross indignities of inequality that marred social life and abolished pre-capitalist relations in land. The result was a society that best approximated the Constitution’s vision of liberal democracy among all Indian states. The Communists set out to build socialism and built participative democracy.

The Congress and most other parties bought into the social agenda of the Communists, blurring ideological distinctions by the ’70s. Land reform laws were enacted by the Communist government of 1957, which was dismissed by the President in 1959. It fell to a shortlived Congress-led government to implement those reforms.

Political Consensus

Since 1967, Kerala has been government-by-coalitions led, alternately, by the Communists and the Congress, all sharing a common vision. This included state financing of school education, whether delivered through state-run schools or private ones: salaries of all staff and maintenance are paid for by the state. A small clutch of unaided schools came up only in the ’90s by which time, Kerala had already attained its Model.

This shared vision had one serious flaw. The Communists were convinced, thanks to Soviet indoctrination, that capitalism had turned obsolete and was not a viable option. They opposed capitalist growth and mobilised people against it. This shared dogma led to Kerala’s stagnation right down to the ’80s, which began to wear off in the ’90s, along with Communist beliefs. Educated Keralites without job opportunities at home migrated in droves and ploughed back remittances. In that sense, remittances are internal to the Kerala Model, not a fortuitous, external prop.

The Kerala Model derived from empowerment to enforce entitlements on the one hand, and forcible stunting of capitalist growth on the other. This led to high social development at relatively low income levels. It was a by-product of what was good and what was bad in the Communists’ practice in Kerala.

This model ceased to be relevant by the end of the nineties. A silent, guilty consensus has been emerging that the state needs capitalist growth. But this story should not be confused with the past experience that shaped the Kerala Model.

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It’s empowerment, Stupid! That explains the Kerala Model

There is much learned analysis alternately praising and damning the Kerala Model of development. The analysis errs, fatally, by excluding political empowerment, and explaining things in terms of the state and the market.

A conscious, mobilised people does away with neat separation between the two and forces both to deliver collectively valued goods and services. Amartya Sen praises state-led welfare, while Bhagwati and Panagariya attribute Kerala’s success to private enterprise and globalisation.

Colleague and columnist Swaminathan Aiyar cited Bhagwati and Panagariya and recentcrime statistics to conclude that even the market-led achievements of Kerala are overstated (ET June 19).

Two Myths

Two myths are widespread. One, the Communists set out to create the Kerala Model and are happy with their achievement. Two, enlightened kings of Travancore and Cochin gave Kerala its historical lead in social development.

In early 20th century, Kerala’s backward castes zeroed in on education as their primary means of emancipation and raced to set up schools. The Christian missionaries were also setting up schools and hospitals, and proselytising. The state had to chip in, so as to retain legitimacy. This is the secret behind the unique kingly enlightenment .

Ayyankali, leader of the agricultural caste Pulayas towards the end of the 19th century and the early years of the 20th, led armed battles to secure his people’s right to walk on the public road, and drink tea from cups rather than in coconut shells, for their women to wear clothes, for their children to attend schools. He successfully withheld farm labour for nearly a year in 1907, looking to fishermen on the coast for alternate sustenance, and brought the land-owning sections to their knees. This strike, the first such in India’s history, was provoked by upper caste refusal to allow an ‘untouchable’ girl to attend a state-run school.

Social Movements

A socially powerful backward caste, the Ezhavas, through their own organised challenge of orthodoxy and own schools, added to the dynamic of subaltern empowerment. These struggles merged into the freedom movement. The Congress and its radical elements who broke away to form the Communist Party in Kerala, inherited this agitational quest for social equality.

The Communist goal was to create a Soviet-type society, convinced as they were that Stalin’s Russia represented the superior future of mankind. They mobilised and organised all sections of society: factory and farm workers, teachers, nurses, civil servants, peasants, the youth, students, just about anyone, save the tribal population.

Thus organised and empowered, the people resisted the gross indignities of inequality that marred social life and abolished pre-capitalist relations in land. The result was a society that best approximated the Constitution’s vision of liberal democracy among all Indian states. The Communists set out to build socialism and built participative democracy.

The Congress and most other parties bought into the social agenda of the Communists, blurring ideological distinctions by the ’70s. Land reform laws were enacted by theCommunist government of 1957, which was dismissed by the President in 1959. It fell to a shortlived Congress-led government to implement those reforms.

Political Consensus

Since 1967, Kerala has been government-by-coalitions led, alternately, by the Communists and the Congress, all sharing a common vision. This included state financing of school education, whether delivered through state-run schools or private ones: salaries of all staff and maintenance are paid for by the state. A small clutch of unaided schools came up only in the ’90s by which time, Kerala had already attained its Model. This shared vision had one serious flaw. The Communists were convinced, thanks to Soviet indoctrination, that capitalism had turned obsolete and was not a viable option. They opposed capitalist growth and mobilised people against it. This shared dogma led to Kerala’s stagnation right down to the ’80s, which began to wear off in the ’90s, along with Communist beliefs. Educated Keralites without job opportunities at home migrated in droves and ploughed back remittances. In that sense, remittances are internal to the Kerala Model, not a fortuitous, external prop.

The Kerala Model derived from empowerment to enforce entitlements on the one hand, and forcible stunting of capitalist growth on the other. This led to high social development at relatively low income levels. It was a by-product of what was good and what was bad in the Communists’ practice in Kerala.

This model ceased to be relevant by the end of the nineties. A silent, guilty consensus has been emerging that the state needs capitalist growth. But this story should not be confused with the past experience that shaped the Kerala Model.